Rubber-Hatchet Job

GEORGE WASHINGTON'S EXPENSE ACCOUNT by Genera/ George Washington and Marvin Kifman, Pic. (ret.). 285 pages. Simon & Schuster. $5.95.

"Like most American schoolboys," says Marvin Kitman, "I had heard the story of how George Washington offered to serve his country during the Revolutionary War without salary. In one of the most stirring speeches in the annals of patriotism, he explained after his election as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army in June 1775 that all he asked of his new country was that it pick up his expenses."

What the teacher failed to add was that such patriotism can be profitable. The proof is to be found in an obscure document called "Accounts, G. Washington with the United States, Commencing June 1775, and ending June 1783, Comprehending a Space of 8 Years." It was published in 1833 by the Chief Clerk in the Register's Office of the Treasury Department. Eight years later it reappeared under different auspices with the title "A Monument to Washington's Patriotism." Coauthor Kitman came across this historical curiosity at the New York Public Library while he was researching a proposed epic entitled The Making of the Prefident, 1789.

Modern Techniques. Kitman is the kind of rabid comic who would buy a 1911 Chinese railway bond and then try to call up Chairman Mao to find out how the investment has been doing lately. He decided to look behind the sober smoke screen of Washington's meticulously kept accounts. In a fiendish demonstration of the power of scholarship, he proves, almost convincingly, that the father of his country was also the founder of modern expense-account living.

Apparently, the shrewd lord of Mount Vernon knew exactly what he was doing when he declined a salary in favor of expenses. Had he accepted a general's pay, Washington would have earned a total of $48,000 (in modern dollars) during the Revolutionary War. In 1783, he submitted vouchers totaling $414,108.21 plus $7,488 in interest, representing a 6% annual charge for his personal cash outlays. In addition, Washington claimed $27,665.30 in travel expenses for his wife Martha. He justified her visits to such winter resorts as Valley Forge on the grounds that the war kept him on the road so much he never had a chance to get home.

Elsewhere, according to Kitman, Washington demonstrated his mastery of modern expense-account techniques.

He included everything down to the last hurtleberry, mingled personal and business expenses, often picked up the checks for expenditures by close associates and occasionally even by his servants. Above all, he knew how to be specific about small items and convincingly vague about the big ones. Or, as Kitman puts it, how to "describe in some depth the purchase of a ball of twine but casually throw in the line, 'Dinner for one army.'"

Washington's expense account included large expenditures for numerous items related to intelligence or spying. But the largest single category--frequently explained as "sundries," "ditto" or "etc."--was for his housekeeping costs. Judging from Kitman's investigations, the Commander in Chief of the nation's first and only radical revolution lived exceedingly high on taxpayer dollars. He dressed in the latest military fashions, transported himself in the most expensive carriage available, and ate and drank royally. At Valley Forge, where Washington's troops shivered and gnawed on roasted shoes around open fires, the chief sacrifice at the general's table was to substitute rum and water for wine--an item that appears with stupefying regularity throughout the ledger.

The strongest single piece of evidence to prove that Washington would have fitted right in with today's expense-account crowd is all but hidden in the mass of Kitman's witty analysis. During his years of hastily retreating, briskly reconnoitering and vigorously crossing icy rivers before breakfast, the general managed to gain 28 Ibs.

sbR.Z. Sheppard

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